Dr Peter Matanle

Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies

Dr. Peter Matanle is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies and Director of Research and Innovation at SEAS. He joined the School of East Asian Studies in 2001 after working as Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at Niigata University in Japan. Peter's research interests are in the social and cultural geography of East Asian development. Within this broad area his focus has been on the following:

• The theory and practice of permanent employment in large organizations,
• Work and its representation in popular culture, and
• Population, environment, and regional development in post-industrial society.

Peter has published widely in the above fields, including four books, chapters in edited volumes, and peer reviewed articles in leading scholarly journals, including Japan Forum, Social Science Japan Journal, Organization, Asian Business & Management, Local Environment, and Gender, Work and Organization. He has peer reviewed research for Japan Forum, Social Science Japan Journal, Contemporary Japan, electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, Pacific Affairs, Sociology, The Sociological Quarterly, American Ethnologist, International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, and Environmental Politics, as well as the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Council, Cambridge University Press, and Routledge.

Since embarking on his research in the mid-1990s, Peter has received research funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, GB-Sasakawa Foundation, British Association for Japanese Studies, White Rose East Asia Centre, and Japan Foundation Endowment Committee.

Research

SEAS Research Cluster

Current Research

Dr Matanle is pursuing a number of related research themes in collaboration with colleagues from around the world. Currently he is working on a co-authored monograph on Lifetime Employment in 21st Century Japan, as well as articles on depopulation and regional sustainability in East Asia, and postdoctoral career formation in Japanese studies.

In the future, Peter plans to research the relationship between demographic change and resource consumption in Japan's rural regions, focusing on the spatial impacts of depopulation on resource demand.

Other Projects and Interests

Peter has an interest in internet communications and the publishing industry. He is the founder and publishing editor of both the electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies and Paulownia Press. The former recently celebrated its tenth year in continuous publication and has published more than 200 refereed articles, discussion papers and reviews, while the latter has published three volumes on war memory and reconciliation in Asia.

In addition to these, Dr Matanle led the redevelopment of the British Association for Japanese Studies website and, as a part of this, the 'Discover Japanese Studies' project. The latter is a set of web and CD-based materials designed to inform secondary school students about Japanese studies as a potential subject of study at university, which was generously supported by grants from the British Association for Japanese Studies, GB-Sasakawa Foundation, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Japan Foundation, Japan Airlines, and the Embassy of Japan in the UK.

Research Supervision

Peter Matanle is currently supervising six PhD candidates. He welcomes applications from prospective research students in the fields of the sociology of work and regional studies in Japan.
PhD Theses Supervised

Completed
ISHIGURO, K., Generating Equal Employment Opportunities: The Work and Life of Female Managers in Japanese Companies
HARTLEY, R., Japan’s hegemony in Southeast Asia (Second supervisor)
RICHMOND, A., Japanese horror film reception
WALKER, A., Buddhism and rural living in Japan (MPHil)

In ProgressESTAMPADOR, S., The JET Programme and Japan’s soft power.
HORN, R., The internationalization of Japanese higher education (Second supervisor).
MCDONALD, D., Managing Workforce Diversity in Japanese Companies.VAINIO, A., The role of NGOs in post-tsunami recovery.AVCI, Y., State and Everyday Politics of Undocumented Immigrants: The Case of Undocumented Turkish Immigrants in Japan
WANG, J., Public Private Partnerships in recovery after 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake

In addition, Peter contributes to postgraduate research training in the University's Doctoral Training Programme and has been awarded European Union teaching mobility grants to teach in Germany at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and Duisburg-Essen University under the Erasmus Mundus programme.

Teaching Philosophy

I firmly believe that education should be a transformative process, for students as well as lecturers; that we all learn from and grow as a result of the challenges that teaching and learning bring to each participant. In order for that to occur, students and lecturers should be open to information and experiences that may contradict and challenge received understandings. I hope that students will come to my class wanting to discover something new about the world, to confront themselves and their preconceived ideas, and wishing to use their education for the benefit of themselves and others.

To accommodate students' different learning styles and needs, I like to vary the mode of deliver of my teaching through a mixture of lectures, seminars, group and individual work, and analysis of visual materials. I expect students to read in depth and be familiar with the most up-to-date scholarly debates not only in preparation for their classes and assessments, but to to use these as the basis for developing their own ideas and frameworks for thinking about the world. I want all my students to feel comfortable about expressing their thoughts freely and confidently, and to participate as an active member of a dynamic scholarly community.

Media expertise

Dr Matanle has experience of both press and broadcasting, having been interviewed by the BBC, the New York Times and the Financial Times, written for the Guardian online, and having appeared as an invited foreign discussant by Japan's national broadcaster NHK to a studio debate on Japan's 'lifetime employment system’.

Peter is available to media organisations to talk about work, employment and regional society in Japan and the UK. Please contact him either by telephone or e-mail to arrange an interview.

Chapters

Matanle P (2016) Understanding the Dynamics of Regional Growth and Shrinkage in 21st Century Japan: Towards the Achievement of an Asia-Pacific 'Depopulation Dividend' In Chiavacci D & Hommerich C (Ed.), Social Inequality in Post-Growth Japan: Transformation during Economic and Demographic Stagnation (pp. 213-230). London and New York: Routledge. View this article in WRRO

Conference proceedings papers

Matanle P (1999) Coping with Modernity: Man and Company in Contemporary Japan. East Asia Research Review: Proceedings of the First UK Post-Graduate Conference in East Asian Studies, Vol. 1 (pp 1-12). Colchester, Essex, 30 July 1999 - 31 July 1999. View this article in WRRO